<div dir="auto"><div>What Kristi said. It wasn't greed that caused this.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">And as to we know better now, probably tops for me was building a scenic fireplace out of asbestos furnace cement. It was terrific material for molding into rocks.</div><div><br></div><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature">Bill Conner Fellow of the ASTC</div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Aug 8, 2025, 11:14 PM Kristi R-C via Stagecraft <<a href="mailto:stagecraft@theatrical.net">stagecraft@theatrical.net</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div><div style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:16px"><div></div>
<div dir="ltr">I don’t believe the FLSA is new since the 90s - Perhaps Richard can answer that for us. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">What happened is enough folks figured out they were victims of wage theft and started to spread the word. Let’s be honest, minimum wage isn’t that much anywhere in the country and that’s ALL it takes to not be an “intern.” </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">#6 here talks about interns and what they can do. <a href="https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/71-flsa-internships" rel="nofollow noreferrer" style="letter-spacing:-0.02em" target="_blank">Fact Sheet #71: Internship Programs Under The Fair Labor Standards Act</a></div><div><br></div><div id="m_5661291490615561126ydp889bee49enhancr_card_5090990516" style="max-width:400px;font-family:YahooSans VF,YahooSans,OpenSans VF,OpenSans,Helvetica Neue,Segoe UI,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif"><a href="https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/fact-sheets/71-flsa-internships" style="text-decoration:none!important;color:#000!important" rel="nofollow noreferrer" target="_blank"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="max-width:400px"><tbody><tr><td width="400"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="max-width:400px;border-width:1px;border-style:solid;border-color:rgb(224,228,233);border-radius:2px"><tbody><tr><td background="https://s.yimg.com/lo/api/res/1.2/1As9_dpm8viZF6h53dVYPg--/Zmk9ZmlsbDt3PTQwMDtoPTIwMDthcHBpZD1pZXh0cmFjdA--/https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OPA/twitter-cards/HomepageTwittercardOmbre.png.cf.jpg" bgcolor="#000000" valign="top" height="175" style="background-color:rgb(0,0,0);background-repeat:no-repeat;background-size:cover;border-radius:2px 2px 0px 0px;min-height:175px"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="width:100%"><tbody><tr><td background="https://s.yimg.com/cv/ae/nq/storm/assets/enhancrV21/1/enhancr_gradient-400x175.png" bgcolor="transparent" valign="top" style="background-color:transparent;border-radius:2px 2px 0px 0px;min-height:175px"><table border="0" height="175" style="width:100%;min-height:175px"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align:left;padding:15px 0 0 15px;vertical-align:top"></td><td style="text-align:right;padding:15px 15px 0 0;vertical-align:top"><div></div></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr><tr><td><table border="0" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="background-image:none;background-size:auto;background-repeat:repeat;background-color:rgb(255,255,255);width:100%;max-width:400px;border-radius:0px 0px 2px 2px;border-top-width:1px;border-top-style:solid;border-top-color:rgb(224,228,233)"><tbody><tr><td style="background-color:#ffffff;padding:16px 0 16px 12px;vertical-align:top;border-radius:0 0 0 2px"></td><td style="vertical-align:middle;padding:12px 24px 16px 12px;width:99%;font-family:YahooSans VF,YahooSans,OpenSans VF,OpenSans,Helvetica Neue,Segoe UI,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;border-radius:0 0 2px 0"><h2 style="font-size:14px;line-height:19px;margin:0px 0px 6px;font-family:YahooSans VF,YahooSans,OpenSans VF,OpenSans,Helvetica Neue,Segoe UI,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:rgb(29,34,40);max-width:314px">Fact Sheet #71: Internship Programs Under The Fair Labor Standards Act</h2><p style="font-size:12px;line-height:16px;margin:0px;color:rgb(151,158,168)">Wage and Hour Division Fact Sheet - U.S. Department of Labor</p></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table></a></div><div><br></div><div dir="ltr">The material handling rule is: if the object is longer or taller than you are tall, you need qualified, competent help moving it. An intern by definition is studying to be that, but isn’t yet. I dearly, with all my momma/teacher heart hope the intern involved with this is getting the mental health support she needs and deserves. </div><div><br></div><div dir="ltr">As for the rest - there were many things I did in my younger days because no one had educated me that it was unsafe or just plain stupid. <span style="letter-spacing:-0.02em">It could have been me instead of Kat, but when the workbox started tipping onto me as we were four-corner hand-carrying it up two flights of stairs, we had enough bodies to be able to grab it before I was crushed. </span></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Our arena riggers would shimmy out on a beam and tie a rope around their waist then to the beam “so if I fall the rope will catch me” and a lot of folks did that until Bill Sapsis designed affordable fall arrest/prevention things specifically for our needs and taught us why the old way was 100% wrong.</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">We know better now, so we do better now. We can’t defend “we’ve always done it this way” anymore. We’ve seen too many people hurt, careers ended and loved ones killed from that attitude. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Any entity using “interns” as the majority of their summer technical theater staff is going to be in the wrong. If you can’t afford to do it right, don’t do it. </div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">Kristi RC</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div><br></div>
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On Friday, August 8, 2025, 03:36:16 PM CDT, William Knapp via Stagecraft <<a href="mailto:stagecraft@theatrical.net" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">stagecraft@theatrical.net</a>> wrote:
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<div><br></div><div dir="ltr">[BIG SNIP BY KRISTI TO GET TO THE RELEVANT PART]|</div></div><div style="padding:12px 0px"><div style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:16px"> </div></div><div style="font-family:'Helvetica Neue',Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px;color:#26282a;border-left:1px solid #ccc;padding-left:8px;margin:0px 0px 0px 8px"><div dir="ltr"><strong style="letter-spacing:-0.02em">About intern staff.</strong><br></div><div><div id="m_5661291490615561126ydpf5a2d34dyiv3410750972"><div><div dir="ltr"><p>As I understand it, interns are meant to work <em>alongside</em> professional staff, not replace them. I’m not a labor lawyer, and I haven’t read the law directly, but that’s my understanding. As we all know, the practice in summer theaters is that interns work right next to professionals.</p><p>I know Jacob’s Pillow has changed a lot in recent years to comply with evolving labor laws. But when I was there in the 1990s, there was a supervising staff — and <em>all</em> crew positions were filled by interns. Those were gentler times, mostly "lights and tights" production. Many interns were dancers who had realized, through injury or other circumstances, that they would never dance professionally but still wanted to be in the dance world.</p><p>We’d have about a dozen interns. During the initial setup period, we’d train them in stagecraft. Over the season, they’d rotate through all the production positions — board ops, wardrobe, APMs, flys. It was on-the-job training, and if you paid attention, you left with a marketable skill set. Many connected with companies that came through and went straight from The Pillow to touring work.</p><p>It was, a bit, like a theater program at a school with an associated professional theater, learning meant doing — except at The Pillow you got a stipend and worked with your heroes. Experiences varied, of course, but the vast majority of people I’ve met who spent time there remember it fondly, hard as the work was.</p><p>That model doesn’t align with today’s legal definitions of internships; the staff situation at The Pillow has professionalized considerably since. But to suggest that this nonprofit dance festival is just another example of a craven capitalist producer cutting corners to save a buck isn’t accurate either.</p><p></p></div></div></div><br></div>
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